D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[AbdulAlhazred]

Was it 1e Rangers who used d8 Surprise dice?

No, I am having trouble finding exactly where it is, but there's a relatively common situation where characters are only surprised on 1 or 2 on a d8. There are a few other cases of similar 'use a different die size' modifiers.

 

[Hussar]

Iirc drown in adnd used different dice.

 

[S'mon]

No, I am having trouble finding exactly where it is, but there's a relatively common situation where characters are only surprised on 1 or 2 on a d8. There are a few other cases of similar 'use a different die size' modifiers.

I think it was something in Unearthed Arcana... There was a common progression in BX/BECM & 1e where initial immanent structures (eg the d6 init system) where not made sufficiently explicit, and eroded over time (often in the hands of different authors). Eg Moldvay in a few places references a d6 + attribute mod task resolution system (eg d6+STR to open door, need 5+) but it was not made sufficently explicit and was generally lost. I find it works great for opposed checks (eg d6+STR mod to grapple), much better than d20-roll-under or the finicky system in Mentzer Companion Set.

1e has a pretty elegant d6 based Surprise/Perception mechanic (Base 2, modify by DEX, Elves, Rangers etc get +1 etc) that in itself works very nicely, certainly much better than d20 checks keying off WIS (that make Rogues & Barbarians crappy scouts and Clerics the best!), but it wasn't properly explained and I'm not surprised it corroded too.

 

[Libramarian]

Was it 1e Rangers who used d8 Surprise dice?

There are a few monsters in the FF and MM2 that use different dice to express a lower than 1 in 6 chance to be surprised. Drow are surprised 1 in 8, Duergar 1 in 10 and Svirfneblin 1 in 12.

If you say so...

Even 1e and 2e have the same issue though, there are all sorts of places where pretty much any old die might be specified to generate a probability (the 1e dwarf racial description is a good one). This is all sorts of messy as it is quite hard to scale and adjust these rolls and what happens if some human decides he's going to look for shifting walls or sloping passages?

Advantage/Disadvantage is mathematically equivalent across different dice.

I honestly never find myself wanting a generic version of some race or class ability. I'm fine with only Dwarves being able to notice shifting walls and sloping passages.

There's something to be said for a simple universal task resolution system, but in play it tends to be overused IME. GMs and players get lazy and start to use it for everything. E.g. it gets used to resolve chases or jumping or climbing, even if the system has other, better rules for those things. It also tends to encourage the DM to call for checks when there probably shouldn't be a check at all, like for riding a horse, or running downhill or something like that. I remember years ago playing in a Castles & Crusades game, initially thinking the universal SIEGE mechanic was great. We had to cross a chasm to get to the dungeon. Because we were just using ability checks for everything, we all tried to climb the wall across with a Dex check. The first character fell, and the next two characters fell trying to climb down to rescue him. It was kind of funny, but mostly just dumb. If we were playing 1e, we would have either had a Thief climb across with a rope (85%+) or pushed a tree over or something. Pretty sure my character fell off a horse at some point during that campaign as well.

 

[pemerton]

No, I am having trouble finding exactly where it is, but there's a relatively common situation where characters are only surprised on 1 or 2 on a d8. There are a few other cases of similar 'use a different die size' modifiers.

I think it was something in Unearthed Arcan

For actual examples of differing surprise dice, you need to look at some of the more baroque races/monsters: [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has mentioned drow, and svirfneblin also have special rules for surprise (maybe only surprised 1 in 12, and achieve surprise on 7 or 9 in 10? I don't have my books ready to hand).

In the DMG, though, Gygax has a more general discussion of the idea: he suggests that, if a secret door is harder to find, you keep the "successful pip range" the same (eg 1 for most people, 1 or 2 for elves, etc) but change the die type (so a better-hidden-than average secret door would be found 1 in 8, or 2 in 8 by an elf).

I don't think it was ever developed systematically.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Advantage/Disadvantage is mathematically equivalent across different dice.

Roughly, but why use different dice if you can simply achieve the same probabilities on a d20 (or something else, d100 used to be popular back in the 70's and 80's though it seems to have been a fad).

I honestly never find myself wanting a generic version of some race or class ability. I'm fine with only Dwarves being able to notice shifting walls and sloping passages.

So, in your games, no matter what a human does he cannot ever be a talented enough miner/engineer/whatever to have even a 1% chance of detecting a sloping passageway? If I have my character go along with a level and check the floors now and then he's just SOL because he isn't short and stubby?

My assertion is that the rules need to actually accommodate adjudicating what characters ACTUALLY DO, which is a beef I have with a lot of the rules in older 'classic' D&D. It simply fails to provide for the actual needs of the players doing actual things, and its only excuse is "genre enforcement". Not buying any arguments that make this approach superior

There's something to be said for a simple universal task resolution system, but in play it tends to be overused IME. GMs and players get lazy and start to use it for everything. E.g. it gets used to resolve chases or jumping or climbing, even if the system has other, better rules for those things. It also tends to encourage the DM to call for checks when there probably shouldn't be a check at all, like for riding a horse, or running downhill or something like that. I remember years ago playing in a Castles & Crusades game, initially thinking the universal SIEGE mechanic was great. We had to cross a chasm to get to the dungeon. Because we were just using ability checks for everything, we all tried to climb the wall across with a Dex check. The first character fell, and the next two characters fell trying to climb down to rescue him. It was kind of funny, but mostly just dumb. If we were playing 1e, we would have either had a Thief climb across with a rope (85%+) or pushed a tree over or something. Pretty sure my character fell off a horse at some point during that campaign as well.

People can do stupid things with any game subsystem, but the idea that something should be removed from the game because it might not be used properly is pretty easy to reductio ad absurdum, I won't even practice the exercise here.

Nor can I help finding the "you just can't do that" approach that you are espousing to be a good idea. I'd spit if a GM in any modern game I play in these days said to me "no, you can't climb over there, go find a tree to fell in order to get across!" Frankly it made me want to spit back in the day too, there just wasn't much alternative.

 

[Libramarian]

Roughly, but why use different dice if you can simply achieve the same probabilities on a d20 (or something else, d100 used to be popular back in the 70's and 80's though it seems to have been a fad).

Because smaller numbers are easier to deal with. The smallest dice that gives the desired granularity should be used. To me it's definitely easier to check wandering monsters with 1 on a d6 rather than 18-20 on a d20 like in 5e. I can't think of any reason to use the same dice for everything. It seems to be an aesthetic thing.

So, in your games, no matter what a human does he cannot ever be a talented enough miner/engineer/whatever to have even a 1% chance of detecting a sloping passageway? If I have my character go along with a level and check the floors now and then he's just SOL because he isn't short and stubby?

If your character somehow secured a level in the gameworld I would allow them to use it. I just don't mind that the system doesn't provide a built-in way for humans to do that.

My assertion is that the rules need to actually accommodate adjudicating what characters ACTUALLY DO, which is a beef I have with a lot of the rules in older 'classic' D&D. It simply fails to provide for the actual needs of the players doing actual things, and its only excuse is "genre enforcement". Not buying any arguments that make this approach superior

IME games that try to do everything don't do anything well. I like games that have some focus. This is just a rule of thumb on my part though. It's definitely not a priori true to me that a game should be able to handle anything a character could try to do. Limitations can produce better, tighter gameplay. I'm the sort of person who doesn't necessarily mind if you can't jump around in an FPS videogame, as you often can't anymore (to look at another example). D&D is relatively quite a very free, open-ended game regardless of whether there are a few class-specific abilities or not.

People can do stupid things with any game subsystem, but the idea that something should be removed from the game because it might not be used properly is pretty easy to reductio ad absurdum, I won't even practice the exercise here.

I suspect it's often used improperly.

Nor can I help finding the "you just can't do that" approach that you are espousing to be a good idea. I'd spit if a GM in any modern game I play in these days said to me "no, you can't climb over there, go find a tree to fell in order to get across!" Frankly it made me want to spit back in the day too, there just wasn't much alternative.

I agree that would be undesirable, but that never comes up in my 1e or classic games. That seems to be more of a theoretical concern. I mean in the example with climbing across the wall, I don't think if I were "really there" that I would want to try climbing it. The result was absurd and not realistic at all. I think when the resolution system is too easy and predictable and samey (ability check for everything) you just do the first thing you think of, which can feel sort of fun and freeing sometimes, but to me is not ideal for "serious" gaming.

If I were to run 3.x or Pathfinder I would actually try to use all of the rules and modifiers for the skills.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Because smaller numbers are easier to deal with. The smallest dice that gives the desired granularity should be used. To me it's definitely easier to check wandering monsters with 1 on a d6 rather than 18-20 on a d20 like in 5e. I can't think of any reason to use the same dice for everything. It seems to be an aesthetic thing.

But there are HUGE systematic advantages. Just for example its possible to apply ability score bonus/penalty to anything that is rolled on d20 when its appropriate. Wandering monster checks might not be one of those things, but surely surprise checks (IE use of stealth) most certainly is! I wouldn't recommend something silly like rolling d1000, but there's no difference in my mind between picking up a d6 and rolling it and picking up a d20 and rolling it.

If your character somehow secured a level in the gameworld I would allow them to use it. I just don't mind that the system doesn't provide a built-in way for humans to do that.

Right, but that system is detached from ability scores, the prime determinant of what you are good at, and has only (in AD&D anyway) a resolution of 25% increments, which is a bit crude as its pretty difficult to model "any intelligent person trying to dope this out" which would be maybe a LOW chance of success, but its POSSIBLE (Imagine yourself in a mine with some equipment, you could probably determine if a passage sloped, maybe not with great reliability, but you'd have a CHANCE of it).

In AD&D this extended on to many other things, like "no, you're a wizard, a cosmic vortex will open up if you swing a sword!" It was just not an acceptable approach to RPG rules to a lot of us, never has been.

IME games that try to do everything don't do anything well. I like games that have some focus. This is just a rule of thumb on my part though. It's definitely not a priori true to me that a game should be able to handle anything a character could try to do. Limitations can produce better, tighter gameplay. I'm the sort of person who doesn't necessarily mind if you can't jump around in an FPS videogame, as you often can't anymore (to look at another example). D&D is relatively quite a very free, open-ended game regardless of whether there are a few class-specific abilities or not.

Nobody is claiming that a game should 'do everything'. Just because it has a more generalized system where you can actually adjudicate most anything someone will try in 4e doesn't mean the game is 'good for everything' or 'does everything'. It simply lacks the impediments to doing things that COMMONLY COME UP IN PLAY in all editions of D&D.

As for hard limits built into the rules, me. I don't agree that they make a better game. I don't see that 3e or 4e are 'worse' games in any measurable sense than AD&D or other 'classic' D&D, yet they contain few of those traditional hard limitations.

I suspect it's often used improperly.

We'll just have to agree to differ in our opinions on that. I certainly have no intention of playing games where the philosophy of design is to not give me tools I can use because its POSSIBLE someone else might not use them "correctly" according to the ideas of the designer. I don't think game designers should feel obliged to include things they won't use or aren't interested in when they design games, or things that are directly opposed to the tone/genre/agenda of the game, but D&D was always a game where you could do a lot of things. As a generic FRPG aimed at the bulk of the FRPG audience's needs it really should try to be inclusive.

I agree that would be undesirable, but that never comes up in my 1e or classic games. That seems to be more of a theoretical concern. I mean in the example with climbing across the wall, I don't think if I were "really there" that I would want to try climbing it. The result was absurd and not realistic at all. I think when the resolution system is too easy and predictable and samey (ability check for everything) you just do the first thing you think of, which can feel sort of fun and freeing sometimes, but to me is not ideal for "serious" gaming.

If I were to run 3.x or Pathfinder I would actually try to use all of the rules and modifiers for the skills.

Again, we'll just have to agree to disagree. There were tons of times I can recall in 1e and 2e where I thought "Yeah, I could petition the DM to come up with some sort of decision about how hard it would be for me to climb that thing, but why bother? We'll just find some other way even though climbing is perfectly logical because who knows what can of worms this will open up with the DM?"

I don't know about the specific situation in your example, you say it was absurd. OK, but that's not necessarily a fault of the system, it sounds more like to me that the DM made the skill check too hard. Many of the older skill systems were quite crude, including that in RQ that you were talking about. There was a fixed chance of doing ANYTHING, with some very awkward and not well explained 'difficulty multiplier' that you might or might not apply to some things. 4e, as an example, has a MUCH more sophisticated and usable skill system where the character's level, training, relevant ability score, and possibly other factors all count in, and are measured against a determined DC that reflects the difficulty of THAT SITUATION specifically. It works quite well. Furthermore there is a pretty large distinction between characters, so you don't just get people doing any old thing that came to mind. They do what they're GOOD at. Usually they do things where they have relevant powers/feats/items to give them help too. This is another area where the 4e generalized approach shines, you can easily apply things like enchantment bonuses from items, which was pretty much impossible to do in AD&D unless it was a weapon and combat, or else there certainly had to be a special rule about it (which again ran into the problem with the variable granularity of different dice).

I can appreciate the aesthetic of rolling different dice for different things, but I totally disagree that it has ANY mechanical advantages or any mechanical reason to recommend it. Its a purely aesthetic preference which has objective mechanical costs. Whether you care to accept the one in trade for the other is obviously up to you. However, I think it pays to be objective about the reasons for doing things.

My guess is that in the days when D&D was being first developed there was no reason to consider a d20 special. The combat system was chainmail and the 'alternate' d20 based system was an addition. There wasn't any real reason at the time to think of one particular resolution system as better than another, and various elements were grafted on from various sources and brought their own dice conventions along for the ride. Clearly the designers of games post-D&D however saw the advantages of unified dice mechanics quite quickly. Virtually every game designed SINCE D&D has had them, and D&D itself has slowly but steadily moved in that direction. I see 4e being the apex of that movement and as a superior design because of it. Its really a pretty refined system that has huge advantages.

 

[D'karr]

As a general question what things from 4e would you (general you) have liked to have seen improved, explored more in depth, or expanded?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As a general question what things from 4e would you (general you) have liked to have seen improved, explored more in depth, or expanded?

As much as I like 4e I have come to the conclusion that there ARE certain 'core' faults, things in the overall design that detract. I think there are too many levels, the game should be 18 or 20 levels. By this I mean your Epic Apotheosis should happen AT level 20, not that Epic should be discarded. This would decrease the number of required levels of powers, and by reducing the number of levels where things have to be given to the PC allow cutting out 'dead wood' stuff. Powers should scale so that you can keep using 'Fireball' for all 20 levels, it just gets better. This removes the need for a lot of higher level powers. The same process allows the existence of MANY less feats and a more 5e-like feat menu where you only pick a feat at a few levels and that feat provides significant mechanical weight, enabling an entire character concept, or adding a significant feature to the character. I would move some powers from class to source, so there could be some basic martial powers that all 'warrior' type characters are able to choose. They would take on role character by interaction with class features. The 10k+ power inventory and 5k+ feat inventory of 4e could be reduced by a factor of 10 in this fashion without sacrificing any real character options.

I would much more heavily leverage the use of the 'disease' track for various things. It could be used to represent any sort of 'affliction', curses, wounds, poisons, diseases, etc. Rituals should be rewritten so that they all scale both in cost and effect as you level (some can be entirely non-scaling of course, there are some that just don't need to scale). This was done inconsistently on an ad-hoc basis.

Items really were pretty all over the place. I'd just start over and write up really iconic and interesting items and give each one a lot of design room. There would be one sort of fire weapon, not 6 different ones, etc. Bring them back to the real classics too.

There are other real significant things I'd change somewhat. I think the combat system is too gimmicky, insufficiently tactical in a genuine way, and clearly can be far too slow in plot terms. All of that can be easily corrected.

Clearly most of this cannot happen within the bounds of 4e compatibility and thus would have to represent a new game design. Sadly I think 4e has taken its course. It is a great game, but filling out the little bits and pieces and polishing things in small ways isn't really enough.